Medical event on duty: heart attacks and strokes

What changed

Previously, a veteran who had a heart attack while on duty had to prove the connection like any other condition — through the Statement of Principles for ischaemic heart disease, showing that a listed factor was met because of service. That is a real evidentiary burden, and plenty of claims failed on it.

The improved MRCA changed the definition of service injury to allow acceptance on the basis that the injury occurred while the person was on duty as a defence member, whether or not it was caused by their duties. Heart attacks and strokes are the examples DVA gives.

Read that carefully, because it inverts the usual test. The question is no longer why it happened. It is when and where it happened.

Who this reaches

Any serving member who experienced a cardiac or neurological event while on duty — on base, on exercise, on deployment, on a ship, in a vehicle, during PT. The event that ended a career and was written off as bad luck or family history is exactly the scenario this provision addresses.

It also reaches the veteran who never claimed because they assumed the answer was obvious. If a doctor once told you your heart attack was down to cholesterol or genetics rather than service, that conclusion was answering the old question. It is not the question the Act now asks.

What you still need

Three things, and they are all documentary:

1. A diagnosis of the condition. Unchanged — DVA cannot accept liability for something that was never named.
2. Evidence the event occurred. The clinical record from the time: the ambulance, the emergency presentation, the hospital admission, the discharge summary.
3. Evidence you were on duty when it happened. This is the piece that decides it, and it usually lives in the service record rather than the medical one — unit records, the medical entry itself, incident reporting, the posting and duty state at the time.

Connecting a clinical event to a duty state is exactly the kind of reconstruction a chart review does. It reads the service record and the medical record together, which is the only way that link gets made.

Why it is worth revisiting an old refusal

If you were refused for a cardiac or cerebrovascular event on the basis that the Statement of Principles factors were not met, the ground has moved. New claims are now decided under the improved MRCA, and this provision does not require the causal argument that defeated the earlier claim. See appeals and determinations for how a previous refusal is answered, and the full list of 2026 changes for what else moved at the same time.

General information for Australian veterans, not legal or financial advice, and current as at September 2026. The authority is DVA — see the Veterans' Legislation Reform pages or call 1800 VETERAN (1800 838 372).